


Stonier

by kittensmctavish



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Pet Sematary - Stephen King
Genre: Animal Death, Blood and Violence, Cemetery, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Grief/Mourning, Harm to Animals, Poisoning, Supernatural Elements, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 05:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14074176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittensmctavish/pseuds/kittensmctavish
Summary: Sometimes, dead is better.Originally posted to tumblr October 29, 2017.





	Stonier

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from my tumblr of the same name.
> 
> “Pet Sematary” is my favorite Stephen King story. And one of the darkest. So…how could I not apply its themes and events to certain characters and events in “Hamilton”? (I’d say sorry, if I was in the slightest.)
> 
> (I do highly recommend “Pet Sematary”, especially its film adaptation. If you can handle dark shit, it’s really good. If you don’t like this fic, you REALLY won’t like “Pet Sematary”.)
> 
> The title comes from my favorite quote in the whole of “Pet Sematary”, which I include here because it’s gooooooooooood…
> 
> “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier…a man grows what he can, and he tends it. ‘Cause what you buy, is what you own. And what you own… always comes home to you.”
> 
> Yeah, I skewed the timelines of certain events. Yes, I know the Hamiltons never owned a dog. And no, syringes didn’t exist until decades later. I don’t really care, though.
> 
> (And yes, I AM being maddeningly vague about what “Pet Sematary” is about and which events from “Hamilton” I’m touching upon.. Because reasons. Though based on the tags, you can probably tell what’s coming.)

Too young.

Nineteen. Could have been younger.

Still too young.

Any time a parent buries their child, no matter the age, it is always too young.

Eliza feels beyond grief. It has been a week since Philip’s duel. And she is afraid she can’t feel what she should be feeling. She should cry. She should feel heavy. She should want to throw things at the wall and scream for God to give her her son back. And she can’t anymore.

Angelica has taken the children away on an excursion. An adventure. A distraction from the grief. Alexander is dead to the world in his office, hand cradled around a glass which once housed rum, the bottle half empty next to him.

Eliza sits in the living room. Stares at Jack, the pup that was once Philip’s, as he gnaws away at a bone. Jack stares back at Eliza. His eyes glow. He snarls before returning to the bone, trying to chip it away, suck at the marrow.

The cemetery…

…she cannot stop thinking about the cemetery.

***

It had been an accident. Jack’s death.

He’d gotten beyond the fence, a carriage was going too quickly, the driver didn’t see him.

Phillip still away at school…how would Eliza ever be able to tell him? That small pup was his world.

…there was a way, though, that Jack could come back.

Aaron Burr talked. Talked of a cemetery. Remnants of a burial ground from the tribe that once lived there.

Bury the dead there…they return. A cat, a bird, a turtle, a dog.

Humans?…never. Who would ever?

The children with their aunt. Alexander still banished from the home, in the wake of the Reynolds Pamphlet. The only two with the knowledge of Jack’s death being Aaron and Eliza.

He’d offered his carriage. Drove it himself to the burial ground. Just within the New Jersey state line.

She’d expected the soil of a burial ground to be littered with bones. But no. The soil, she’d found, was soft. Clean. Easy to dig. Aaron would have insisted to do the job himself…but one had to bury their own on this ground.

Jack’s body had still been wrapped in a scarlet-tinged white sheet when she laid him in the ground.

Did they wait? She’d wondered.

No.

The dead retained memories. Always returned to theirs and their own.

It had all felt like a dream, Eliza remembered thinking. Until she’d woken up the next morning, still in her day dress from the day before, hem and boots muddy. Until she’d heard the pawing the scratching, the growling. Until she’d opened the door to the tattered shreds of pinkish fabric and the glinting eyes of Jack.

The same Jack.

But not the same Jack.

***

Humans?…never. Who would ever?

…no real answer to that question, Eliza realizes. (Of course, Aaron is never one to talk much.)

Had it never been done? Had it EVER been done?

…she is back in her mourning garb (most appropriate for the dead of night), she is preparing the horses at the carriage when Aaron approaches.

He knows what she is thinking, and he is begging her not to.

She throws her questions in his face. He never said it’s hadn’t ever been done. It COULD be done.

It SHOULDN’T be done, he pleads. Eliza’s hands falter at the mention of Theodosia.

His wife. His dead wife.

He reveals, his TWICE-dead wife.

…it had been so unexpected, her death. And he’d been so lonely. So desperate for her again. His daughter away in England, news of her mother’s death hadn’t had the chance to reach her, she’d never have to know.

…dead is better.

You’ve seen Jack. Back but not really back. Not the same as he once was.

It’s worse with a human.

Aaron’s voice trembles as he clutches at Eliza’s shoulders, lost in memories of losing his wife twice, the second time by his own hand, the hand that had brought her back.

She pulls away.

She rejects his help. Help he never offered, had no intention to offer.

It will be different with Philip, she declares. Just you wait. Wait and see.

***

It’s quiet uptown. So quiet uptown. Dead quiet uptown.

Not a soul but the interred bones of those dead longer than her son as she unearths his body, lifts him up from the stony earth, cradling him close, as she had when he was a babe. In her arms, he is no heavier than he ever was as a child. Perhaps a mother’s strength goes beyond earthly bounds.

Within the bounds of the cemetery, the burial ground…perhaps it gives her this strength. It senses what she is doing. That she’s coming. That she leads her horses there, bids them still, retrieves her son from the carriage.

The soil feels lighter with each shovelful. It doesn’t take her long before Philip’s body lays just so in his new…temporary grave. She all the same apologizes as she piles the dirt on top of him.

But it won’t be long. He will be back. He’ll return to her.

She must return home. There is much to prepare.

It’s all a dream, she thinks. A whirl of action between the burial ground and pillow on her bed cushioning her head and she lays down.

When she awakes, Philip will be back. And all will be well.

***

It’s quiet uptown.

Then something stirs.

Footsteps fall on cobblestones.

***

Eliza is still garbed in back, caked in mud, aching when she wakes. Aching in her body from the dig, in her heart for her son.

…how long has she slept? A few minutes? A few hours? A few days?

Is her Philip back yet?

She rushes down to the living room. To the piano, where she’d set up all of his music, his poems, his drawings, everything they did as mother and son.

Empty.

She freezes.

Alexander.

She’d never told Alexander. True, he’d been drunk but…if he’d woken up…seen Philip first…

She begins her run to the study…and halts.

Trekking from the ajar door of the study and back out…muddy footprints. About the size and shape of Philip’s.

(She’d always told him to take off his muddy boots before entering the house, and he’d never listened.)

She pushes the door all the way open. Papers litter the desk. One is propped up, folded, her name scrawled on the outside.

A letter from Alex, she reads.

A last letter.

Aaron Burr has challenged him to a duel (she will never understand men and their need for duels, this needlessly finite way to defend one’s honor). Should he not survive, he wants her to know…so many things.

Best of wives, best of women.

She looks to where the guns are kept. Sees them missing. It all seems so clear and she begins to hope that her husband will return to her…

…until she sees the smears of mud on the white walls, next to the mount for the guns. Until she turns to the door and spies a sheet of paper held up against it. With a penknife, stuck so deep into the door, she cannot retrieve it. She rips the paper off, attempts to make out the scrawl she barely recognizes as her son’s handwriting.

It doesn’t even really matter what it says, she realizes.

That duel…may not be a duel.

…what has Philip done?

What has he DONE?

What has SHE done?

The paper falls from her hands and she rushes for the front door.

She stops at a growl.

Jack.

He gnaws away at his marrow bone. Has bitten through some of it. Chips of white litter the floor around him.

Eliza watches Jack for a long while. Then returns to her bedroom. Opens a small drawer. Retrieves a small box. Opens it. Withdraws the syringe. The medicine.

Unused for ages. From an ailment of Alexander’s long ago, an old war wound.

What does it matter if the medicine’s not fresh. If the medicine has aged to poison.

All the better.

She fills the syringe, doesn’t bother to tap the bubbles out of the glass. She walks back down to Jack. Gently takes his collar. Shushes him. He’s barely acknowledged her. Continued to suck at the marrow.

There is the faintest of whines as the needle presses into his neck and the plunger pushes down.

His gnawing fades to licking. He lays his head down. The glow in his eyes dims before the lids fall. Two more breaths…one more breath…

…and Jack is dead again. Looks more like himself than he did in his second life.

Dead is better.

Eliza stares at his body before picking it up. He’s set down once more – so she can refill the syringe – and then he’s in the back of the carriage.

And she is back to New Jersey.

To the dueling grounds.

Where Philip had died.

Where hopefully, her husband lived.

***

Meanwhile, uptown stirs.

Uptown echoes.

Echoes of Philip’s name from two voices.

Gunshots.

Cries of pain. Confusion.

A cackle. Young. Gravelly.

Uptown shudders.

***

The first thing Eliza sees is red.

Red droplets on green grass. Small droplets that grow bigger. That bleed into a trail. A trail that leads to a pool. And to the body.

A body.

There are three other figures in the distance, but this one is closest.

Aaron is closest. Bullet lodged in his chest. Throat torn open. Mouth ripped apart in a grotesque smile.

“Talk less, smile more” rings in her mind. (What escapes her throat – a laugh or a sob?)

She can’t linger on him too long because if he’s on this end, then the other three…

…she runs over to what has to be her husband. Passes the body of what must have been her husband’s second,, the body of…is that the doctor?…half-kneels, half-collapses next to her Alexander.

Struck between the ribs. Eyes open. Glazed. Shocked.

The blood is not quite congealed. He is still so recently passed.

If she’d only been quicker, perhaps she could have–

…a crack. Something grazes her ear, hisses by her cheek hot and stinging. She turns.

Her son…Philip…

…not her Philip.

Not the same.

His smile, but not his smile. His laugh, but not his laugh.

She reaches for the syringe in her pocket. Does not feel it. Her eyes dart over the grass for a glint in the light. Catch it.

Philip growls, approaching her, and she has to make a run for it. Rip herself away from his arms, his clawing hands as his nails (his caked-with-dirt nails) try to dig into her skin. She cries out, trips him up as she falls.

The gun falls out of his hand. There’s no shot left in it, but she smashes it with her boot, to be safe. She crawls over to the syringe and picks it up.

Philip has righted himself, sights set on her.

His eyes glow. Flash.

For a moment, he’s hers again.

She holds her arms out, syringe tucked surreptitiously between fingers. Calls out to him, come here, my baby, come here.

He props himself up on his hands, drags himself over to her. Tears well in her eyes as she beckons him. As he grows and growls closer.

She gently takes his shoulder, stopping him. He makes a small, confused sound. She blinks again.

He cries out as the needle of the syringe buries into his neck, it’s almost familiar, Phillip hated needles, he’d always hated needles, her heart always cried when he cried at the prick of a needle…

…her heart is silent this time.

She counts with the push of the plunger, one two three four five six seven eight nine…the syringe is empty before ten.

The glow fades from his eyes as he lowers himself to the ground, as the poisonous overdose of medicine courses through his veins. He looks up at her.

Whispers for his mother once.

His eyes flicker out.

Her eyes are dry.

He is gone before she reaches seven.

Dead is better.

***

It’s quiet uptown.

***

She sets Aaron in his bed, covers his fixed smile with a quilt.

The doctor goes next to him, on the floor, keeping a silent vigil.

Alexander’s second – the judge, she’s recognized at some point while dragging his body. It is only appropriate he goes in the study, propped up at the desk.

Philip at the piano (Jack at his feet). She’d never known Aaron even owned a piano.

Perhaps it is…was…Theodosia’s.

She apologizes to Theodosia in her heart as she pours the oil, plants the papers, litters the letters, tips the lantern.

She further makes an orphan of Aaron’s daughter as the flames spread through the Burr household.

The world seems to burn.

She watches for a few moments before turning back to the carriage. Checks Alexander, pushes hair out of his forehead, away from his still-open eyes. She shuts them with her fingers.

There’s a million things he hasn’t done.

…he will live to do them.

Jack, of course, he was an animal, of course he would come back different, too obvious.

Philip…she’d waited too long. A week was too long. Seven days.

Alexander hasn’t been dead seven hours. There’s still time.

She can give him more time.

It will be different.

Just you wait.

***

Uptown burns.

Uptown shatters.

Uptown shudders.

Uptown pleads, not again, as Eliza sets off to (again) do the unimaginable.

***

The soil of the cemetery feels stonier.

Perhaps to match Eliza’s heart.

It should be easier, she thinks as she digs.

It shouldn’t feel heavier. Each shovelful of dirt. Her heart. Alexander.

Love, take your time, she prays to him as she pats the earth packed on top of him.

She will see him at home. He’ll come back.

It will be enough.

***

Eliza cleans Alex’s study, sets up new stacks of clean papers, prepares a fresh pot of ink, fetches a feather for a new quill.

He always wrote like he was running out of time. He would have all the time in the world now, he had more, she gave him more.

He’d said once that he imagined death so often, it felt like a memory. Would he remember? Would he be unaware?

His first death will become a distant memory to her. She’s erased it from his narrative. She’s helped him to write a new one, a continuing one.

How lucky he will be to be alive again.

She shaves away at the feather to prepare the point for the new quill. The knife slips as her hands shake, The blade glides across her finger. She hisses, drops the quill, the knife. The blood bubbles up from the cut.

The door creaks behind her.

A footfall creeps closer.

A hand on her shoulder.

“Best of wives, best of women.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback welcome and appreciated.


End file.
